Crist to run for Senate as independent

Once the overwhelming favorite in the battle for the Republican Senate nomination, Crist is now trailing former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio by more than 20 points, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month.

But the survey offered hope Crist could win in November if he ran as an independent. In this scenario, Crist would have a slight edge over Rubio and a larger lead over Rep. Kendrick Meek, the likely Democratic nominee, in a three-way general election matchup.

I grew up attending church one pew behind Charlie. I dated his niece for a summer, worked on his early campaigns, talked to the guy at church, the yacht Club, numerous St. Pete bars, and in his condo. I love the man. He truly is a really, really nice person.

This whole Senate run has struck me as incredibly stupid and misguided. Why leave the governorship of the third-largest state at the peak of your popularity to become an outcast Senator of the minority party? He's run this campaign so poorly. The Florida media HATES and I mean HATES Marco Rubio, always has since his churlish days as Speaker of House (in person he is extremely likeable and funny, but he was a bit of an ass as SofH). And Rubio is still kicking his ass. I'm just so pissed off that this is even happening.

His best option is to pull out of the race. He doesn't have near the financial warchest he needs for the Senate Race. His key staff have all left. He'll take some flak for dropping out, but still have a chance at being re-elected governor. The GOP candidate for governor is terrible. Just awful. If you look up "old white guy" in the dictionary, McCollum's picture should be there. Zero charisma.

He used to go home with young women almost every night he went out in St. Pete, so much so that a few of my friends called him "Charlie Cockblock." If he's gay, he's compensates like hell for it. Frankly, I'd rather he be gay than an inveterate womanizer.

This whole Senate run has struck me as incredibly stupid and misguided. Why leave the governorship of the third-largest state at the peak of your popularity to become an outcast Senator of the minority party?

I have read that Crist is very ambitious. I think the purpose of the Senate run is to raise his national profile to allow him to run for President in 2012 or, more realistically, to be in the VP candidate conversation. Call it the "Scott Brown" effect.

Way more of local politics than you want to know, but if you do want to know, read on

He made it official yesterday afternoon. The GOP legislature, in a breathtakingly slimy move, decided to, without any forewarning, insert abortion restriction language into a bill around lunctime, making all the House and Senate debate about abortion all afternoon and stealing media coverage from Charlie.

It gets worse. Florida has a tradition called Sine Die. On the last day of the legislative session, the House and the Senate Chambers both open their doors, so that the Speaker and the Senate Pres face each other. It's way too far for them to see each other though, so the sergeant-at-arms for each chamber gets at either end of the rotunda in between the two chambers and drop white handkerchiefs at the same time. The Speaker and Pres can see these, however, and so they, as leaders of their respective chambers, can synchronize their gavel strikes to close the session. (The FL Constitution mandates this)

It's actually a lot cooler than it sounds. All the legislative aides (at least 70% female and dressed very nicely) and lobbyists line the halls. The legislators come out and the Speaker, Pres, and Governor all give speeches about how much they accomplished and how much they love each other. Then everyone walks across the street to this strip of bars and gets hammered. It's really an awesome time.

The Speaker is now boycotting Sine Die because of Charlie "betraying" his party. This is the same guy that proclaimed at the start of session that he and his party (GOP) were committed to cleaning up this mess and eliminating all the waste. Sounds great, except the GOP has controlled all three branches of FL government for the last twelve years. You're cleaning up your own mess, you asshat.

Anyway, I should probably stop typing this on a state computer , on the taxpayer dime.